by M. D. Massey
Our destination was a small, bowl-shaped barrow, hidden in a craggy valley high in the mountains of the central Highlands. Click portalled us there, and I led the way into the depression with Bryn at my side and Ásgeir on rear guard. Loki sulked above us, leaning against a large boulder at the edge of the barrow, wrapped in a fur blanket with a bottle of Brennivín in hand.
Click appeared at my side as we neared the entrance, resting a hand on my arm to halt me before I walked in.
“I’ll scout ahead,” Ásgeir said as he brushed past.
It took a pointed look from Click before Bryn also took the hint. “Fine, I’ll help him. The troll shouldn’t be left alone, anyway. He’s sure to betray us at the first opportunity.”
I rubbed a hand across my face as Bryn entered the tomb. “I can already tell that this is going to be a hell of a fun time.” Loki looked to be asleep above us, so I leaned in to whisper in Click’s ear. “Hey, I meant to ask you—”
“Loki’s not using magic ta’ seduce women, lad,” Click said, cutting me off. “I’d not be friends with him if he were. ’Sides, it’s against the trickster’s code. We’re not a bunch of bloody fookin’ rapists, like that prick Diarmuid.”
“That’s cool. I’d be damned disappointed if he did. Loki might be annoying, but I can’t help but like the guy.” I nodded at the crypt. “So, what can we expect in there?”
“That’s what I was goin’ ta’ tell ya’. Loki spoke true with regards ta’ the powers o’ the draugar. Ye’ll hafta’ best their chieftain, and quickly, if ya’ wish ta’ barter favors with ’em. Yer’ other half’ll likely want to scrap with the lot o’ them, so resist the urge. Even that one can’t fight off a couple dozen draugar. Jest’ focus on wrestling their leader back to his grave pit, and that’ll give ya’ time ta’ bargain.”
“Anything else I should know?”
“Hmm. If ya’ get into a bind, fire might hold ’em off. They’re basically creatures o’ cold, and as old as they are, some’ll go up like a wick under the right conditions.” He clapped me on the shoulder like a little league coach sending his star player off to win the game. “Now, go get ’em, lad. And remember, Finn’s fate and the fate o’ the world depends on ya’.”
“What? Hey, wait—” I said, but Click had already disappeared. “Ah, fuck.”
With nothing left but to enter the crypt, I started shifting. I was tempted to change into my full Fomorian form, but I decided that the element of surprise might gain me some small advantage. It was a sure bet that the draugar would recognize Bryn for what she was, and they’d likely focus on her and Ásgeir. If those two could keep the clan occupied, I might be able to sneak up on Jerrik and drag him back to his grave.
The whole plan sounded like a lot of “ifs” and “mights” to me, but it was the best I could come up with on short notice. You’d think with a couple of legendary tricksters on my side, they’d have concocted a better plan than, “The bad guys are that way—have at it.” Somehow, this whole thing felt like a setup, but that was a given where Click was involved. I simply had to trust that whatever scheme he was working on was ultimately to my benefit.
Yeah, right.
I’d nearly completed the process of stealth-shifting when Bryn stuck her head around the corner of the entrance. “First few chambers are clear, but the place is a maze.” She glanced over her shoulder and shook her head. “I don’t like this plan, druid. The fearsome reputation of the draugar is well-deserved. And Odin had a very good reason for cursing Jerrik’s clan.”
“Don’t tell me,” I said. “They were working for the giants.”
“How did you know? Theirs is not a tale written in the sagas.”
“Lucky guess. Listen, you and Ásgeir will have to keep them distracted while I take out Jerrik. Can you do that?”
She rubbed her chin for a few seconds before responding. “Perhaps, with the troll’s help. Facing the entire clan in battle would be a death sentence, but we might be able to draw most of them away. I prefer large battlefields and open skies, so skulking through tunnels is not my strong suit. However, the mountain troll will be at home under earth and rock. He should be able to keep us ahead of the draugar for a time, if he does not betray us.”
I threw my head back and let my mouth hang agape. “Fuck’s sakes, would you give it a rest? I don’t care what your beef is with trolls, or Ásgeir in particular. I just need you to help me rescue Dian Cécht.”
She gave me a heavy-lidded sneer. “Fine. But don’t say I didn’t warn you, about the troll and the trickster both.”
Bryn turned on heel and anger-strutted back into the barrow. When she was gone, Loki’s voice echoed from above me.
“Valkyries. Can’t fuck ’em, and you sure can’t kill ’em.”
“Why not?”
“Why can’t you fuck ’em, or why can’t you kill them?” he responded.
“Yes.”
Loki chuckled. “Daddy issues.”
Seeing in starlight and moonlight wasn’t a problem when I stealth-shifted, but total darkness was another matter. Just to be safe, I cast a spell that would allow me to see in total darkness. The last thing I needed was to be caught blind when one of these draugr things attacked.
Ásgeir stood to my left, in front of the lone exit from the tomb’s antechamber. The troll sniffed the air, then he laid a hand on the rock wall that framed the arched doorway.
“The draugar stir, druid.”
“So much for the element of surprise,” I replied. “Ásgeir, I want you and Bryn to take them on a wild goose chase. No need to fight unless it’s absolutely necessary. Just distract them while I find their leader and bring him to heel. And if things get hairy, I want you two to split for the surface. I’ll find my own way out.”
Bryn hissed softly. “I do not think that’s wise—”
“Then it’s a good thing you’re not in charge.”
The valkyrie bristled. “Might I remind you that I do not work for you, druid? I am here on a voluntary basis, and I’m under no compulsion to take orders from you.”
I knuckled my forehead before responding. “True, but there’s a reason you volunteered to help me. I haven’t figured out what it is yet, but I suspect you’re under orders to either keep me alive, keep me under tabs, or both. Regardless, it’d make things a lot easier on everyone if you quit bitching and started acting like a team player.”
“Fine, I will do as you ask,” she said through gritted teeth. “And when the draugar are tearing the flesh from your bones, I will stay safely outside the barrow and listen as your screams fade away to nothing. Come, troll, it is time for us to do as the druid asks.”
She took off at a jog, past Ásgeir and into the darkness. The troll merely chuckled.
“What?”
“It’s just that what the magician told me about you is true,” he said in an amused voice.
“And what is that?”
“He said, ah, that you certainly have a way with women.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“As he put it, ‘That lad could chase off a sex-starved spinster after slipping her a love potion an’ giving her first mention in his will.’”
“Hold up—you think Bryn has the hots for me?”
“I believe she admires you, for reasons unknown,” he replied. “Whether she wishes to breed with you remains to be seen.”
“Er, right.” I chewed my lip for a few seconds. “You think I was too hard on her?”
“You are a stranger in a strange land, on a quest to rescue a god from a jötnar chieftain who has hundreds of his brethren under his command. From what I’ve seen, your list of allies is rather short. I do not think you can afford to alienate those you have.”
“I’ll take that under consideration. You’d better catch up to her before she leaves you behind.”
“The valkyrie could no more lose me in these tunnels than she could out-swim a seal in the sea,” he said matter-of-factly. “But I will do as you ask.
Do not tarry on your way to finding Jerrik, druid. Despite my talents, we will only be able to evade them in their own territory for so long.”
The troll gave me a nod, then he was gone, moving more swiftly than I’d have thought possible on his spindly Herman Munster legs.
“And now that we all know where we stand,” I muttered. “Time to get this show on the road.”
I pulled Gunnarson’s cloak of invisibility out of my Craneskin Bag, draping it across my shoulders as I prepared to wage a war of wills with the item. The cloak was semi-sentient and still pissed at me for killing its former master, the last of his line. Thus, I usually had to persuade it to work for me.
Surprisingly, for the first time ever, the cloak triggered as soon as I put it on. I still didn’t trust it, though. For insurance, I cast a chameleon spell on myself in case the damned thing decided to go on the fritz at the worst possible time. It had happened before, after all.
Once I knew I wouldn’t be seen, I took off at a slow, measured pace into the bowels of the tunnels. As I moved further into the darkness, it occurred to me that I was basically doing a dungeon run. Hell, I may as well have been playing an MMO or an open-world RPG; I was headed into a system of ancient catacombs, which were inhabited by draugar, on a mission to subdue their skeleton king.
All-in-all, it was a pretty wicked scenario. It’d be even better if I didn’t get killed in the process. To avoid such a disaster, I’d need to keep my head in the game. Since I had no real-world experience raiding draugar dungeons, I thought back to the years I’d spent gaming when I was a kid, long before my first brush with The World Beneath.
So, what’s the first thing you usually run into on a typical dungeon dive?
Spider webs?
Check.
Spooky runes and creepy faces carved into the walls?
Double check.
Traps?
Click.
“Aw, son of a b—!”
I fell about twenty feet, landing on a heap of bones with a loud crunch. Thankfully, the pile was large enough to keep me from being impaled on the rusty iron spikes that lined the bottom of the pit. Based on the height of the stack, dozens of grave robbers and other dungeon delvers had died here. Some had fallen prey to the spikes, while others appeared to have perished from injuries suffered on impact.
Lucky for me, Fomorian bones didn’t break easily. I stood unsteadily, bones crunching underfoot as I scanned the chamber for an escape route. The stone trapdoor I’d fallen through revolved on a hinge in the center of the slab. As it tilted back into place above, I heard something click, then a tiny pulse of magic flowed through the trapdoor.
So, the trigger was magical as well as physical. Interesting.
It made sense, considering it would be impossible to get a giant stone slab so perfectly balanced that it would swing open at the slightest pressure. Magic would be required to make the trap work, either to reduce friction between the stone and hinge or to overcome inertia and get the trapdoor moving—or both. Using a pressure plate to trigger the spell was a simple, yet elegant solution. No need for complicated spell weaves, just a few carved runes that would complete a circuit when the plate was depressed.
Slick.
It was ingenious enough to impress me, and I knew a lot about creating wards and magic traps. Yet the sapper’s ingenuity also meant I couldn’t easily trigger the latch from underneath, even if I could reach the door above.
Piss.
“Well, it could be worse,” I muttered to myself. “Imagine if some of these skeletons were alive.”
At that precise moment, a thin, bony hand latched around my ankle.
“What the—?”
The hand was definitely not disembodied, although that was the first thing that came to mind when I looked down. Instead, it was attached to a gray leathery arm, one with ancient Nordic runes tattooed into its flesh. Its grip was supernaturally strong, enough to cause me pain even in my stealth-shifted form. I suspected that if I had been in my fully human form, it would have snapped my ankle.
As if being grabbed by an obviously undead creature while stuck in a pit full of human bones wasn’t bad enough, the thing shrieked beneath me. The creature’s howl was a cross between a moan and a roar, and it echoed with the sort of frustrated rage that only the undead can manage. In the Hellpocalpyse, I’d heard similar cries on a nightly basis. I’d spent most of my evenings there hiding on rooftops and in attics, drifting off to sleep while the living dead wailed their never-ending lament below.
It still gave me nightmares.
On instinct, I released a very weak lightning bolt spell that struck the creature on the back of the forearm. The shock did very little to harm it, but that wasn’t the point. As the electrical charge hit the nerves and muscles I targeted, the hand slightly flexed open for a brief instant. That opening was enough for me to yank my leg free so I could gain a few feet of distance between me and my assailant.
There are things they never teach you in magic school that every magic user learns on the fly. One of them is that it’s very hard to safely dry your own clothes with magical heat while you’re still in them. An afternoon spent smelling of burned pubes is usually enough to cure a magician of that notion forever.
Similarly, attempting to fly by way of wind power almost always ends in disaster, you can’t charge a phone with a lightning bolt spell, trapping spiritual entities inside mundane objects is a lot scarier and more dangerous than cartoons would have you believe—and, oh yeah, never cast a fireball spell in an enclosed space.
Of course, anyone who has ever played D&D could tell you that. But people from all walks end up studying the magical arts, and many of them have never even heard of tabletop roleplaying games. So, every year, some dumbass apprentice blows himself up by casting a fireball inside his house. Such events are always reported as natural gas explosions, but those of us who are clued in know what really happened.
Anyone who makes it past their first year studying magic learns these things, usually the hard way while their tutor laughs at them from a very long distance away. I knew them, and I’d most definitely learned those lessons through trial and error while Finnegas had his share of laughs at my expense. Thus, casting a fireball inside that pit of horrors wasn’t the first tactical option that came to mind.
But when every last skeleton and cadaver in that place began to stir, I very nearly lost my shit. And when they all came crawling at me like a pile of angry, dusty, click-clacking ants, I got over my fear of self-immolation faster than you could say “Fire Marshal Bill.” Before I knew what I was doing, I’d summoned a fireball in each hand while backing up into the farthest corner of the pit.
I had one last thought before I unleashed hell’s fury on the roomful of skeletal warriors.
Hopefully my eyebrows will grow back.
13
I knew that if I just blasted the center of the room, I’d get tossed back into the wall and be caught in the expanding flame-ball of death that I was about to release. So, I decided to get creative. Having near-vampire speed and werewolf strength came with a few advantages, chief among them being capable of superhuman feats of agility.
At Click’s behest, I’d recently spent a great deal of time experimenting with said skills. In addition to practicing magic spells old and new, I’d put in endless hours pushing the limits of my shifted physical abilities in the relatively safe confines of the Grove. As I’d previously discovered, each form had its own unique benefits and drawbacks—but now I knew how to take advantage of them.
My full Fomorian form was stronger, more durable, and it healed a heck of a lot faster, but its bulk made it difficult to do maneuvers that required rapid changes in direction and speed. On the other hand, my stealth-shifted form was quicker and lighter, although it lacked the sheer toughness and hard-hitting mass of my other form. Still, all that speed and agility had its advantages, and I was practically the king of parkour in this form.
Figuring that I could kill
two birds with one stone, I tic-tacced up the corner of the pit, kicking off one wall and then the other. Within two strides I’d covered fifteen feet of vert, at which point I twisted in midair so I faced the ground with my back to the trapdoor above. Then, I released my fireball spells, aiming them at the writhing pyramid of desiccated corpses and skeletons in the center of the room.
One decent fireball spell can do a lot of damage. Two was probably overkill in a space that small, but I was going for more than just incineration. The fireballs converged just as they hit the mass of bones and dried flesh, releasing all that pent-up heat in one massive conflagration of fiery magic. I closed my eyes just as the skeletal warriors were engulfed, covering my face before the explosive gases expanded to include me as well.
I had yet to reach the apex of my upward trajectory, so I was moving with the pressure wave when it hit. As the rapidly-expanding ball of heat and gas struck, it propelled me into the underside of the trap door. I hit the stony surface hard as I performed a simple judo break fall, a maneuver designed to protect the vulnerable parts of the body upon being thrown to the ground.
Having never done the move upside down, my timing was a bit off, and I accidentally shattered my elbow on impact. The good news was that the pressure wave hit the trap door harder than it hit me, breaking the latch and swinging it open as all those gases released into the tunnel above. With expert timing—and a little luck—I kicked off the door, landing lightly in the corridor where I’d started moments before.
My clothes and hair were nearly burned off, my skin was blackened and blistered in several places, and I had a broken arm—but I was alive and had escaped the pit of doom. The only items on me that weren’t damaged were my Craneskin Bag and the invisibility cloak, both having been imbued with resistances to elemental and physical damage by their makers. Despite the broken arm and the second and third-degree burns I’d suffered, I thanked my lucky stars that I hadn’t suffered worse.